10.30.2012

Women and Sex, Naomi Wolf

Naomi Wolf: Liberate female sexuality research

Engaging with new data is part of feminism's tradition of empowering women's well-being and autonomy.

(Photo: AP)

Story Highlights

Is this brave new world really that liberating for women? The new data show -- not so much.

Forty years on, the data on female sexual satisfaction have not budged upward.

Remarkable new findings could change that, if we will pay attention.

12:13PM EDT October 26. 2012 -
The conventional wisdom is that we are living in a free-for-all,
anything-goes, truly sexually liberated society. There is -- seemingly
-- every kind of information about sex in virtually every magazine on
newsstands and, of course, one can dial up porn at the click of a modem,
24/7. But is this brave new world really that liberating -- for women?
The
new data show -- not so much. When Shere Hite brought out her famous
(and, at the time, notorious) report on female sexuality in 1973, about
one-third of women self-reported that they did not have orgasms when
they wished to during sex. This finding preceded Hite's important -- for
the time -- assertion that penetration was not all there was in terms
of female sexual response, and a wave of information about female
sexuality followed.
But our conventional wisdom about what female
arousal and desire are was frozen in the mid-1970s. Masters and
Johnson's (for the time) avant-garde research established that female
sexual response was pretty much the same as male sexual response, unfolding in a parallel cycle of arousal, plateau, climax and resolution.
Well,
40 years on, the data on female sexual satisfaction have not budged
upward since Hite's day. In some ways, they show erosion in pleasure and
even a striking decline in many women's fundamental interest in sex.
Indeed,
for all the tremendous media interest in male sexual dysfunction -- and
the millions invested in pharmaceutical treatments for it -- a
remarkably unheralded epidemic is actually almost not discussed at all
outside of a few doctors' offices and private spaces: One-third of women (some data show up to 43%) report "hypoactive sexual desire" -- they self-report little interest in sex and little desire for it, and define that as a problem for them.
An additional 30% -- some the same women, some different women -- about
the same as in Hite's day, self-report that they do not regularly reach
orgasm when they wish to do so, and also self-report that that is a
problem as they define it.Should this matter?
Something
striking about a major cultural change -- I would say, a major step
backward in our fight for women's freedom and well-being -- is that when
Hite launched her discussion, while it was greeted with great
controversy, finally society agreed that women's pleasure and sexual
well-being mattered and deserved respectful inquiry. From Ms. Magazine to The Dinner Party, it was a given, ultimately, that female sexual pleasure was an important value for feminists to champion.
In
contrast, discourse about the value of women's sexuality and their
erotic well-being has been so marginalized over the past few decades
that in today's climate, new findings on female arousal and satisfaction
are not being reported in mainstream media. When one brings them into
public debate, as I have recently, I find that one must make the case
from the start that these numbers -- and female sexual satisfaction --
matter at all.But matter they do
One obvious insight
is suggested by remarkable new findings in fields of neuroscience: In
the past generation, scientists at the forefront of research on women
and desire are making transformational new discoveries about female
anatomy, arousal and the role of orgasm. The new data that scientists
are revealing about women and desire often include a brain-vagina
connection. These discoveries should change how we see the pattern of
female sexual response, and they go a long way to explaining why, for so
many women, pleasure under the conventional wisdom is so elusive.
For
example, though Masters and Johnson believed that men's and women's
responses are the same, new data show key gender differences in response
patterns. The role of the autonomic nervous system is much more important for women's arousal than we have understood. This means that relaxation, being free from "bad stress,"
is essential to women's bodies' abilities to become sexually excited.
It turns out that sharing housework, or doing whatever is necessary to
de-stress a female partner, really is foreplay for women, in a way that
is unique to them. These findings can benefit women of all sexualities,
and whether they are in relationships or on their own.
Other
fascinating differences are being mapped in labs: Barry Komisaruk of
Rutgers University has identified a new sexual center in women -- at the
mouth of the cervix; Janniko Georgiadis and his team found that a part
of the brain involved with self-regulation and self-awareness goes quiet
for women
in orgasm; Komisaruk and Beverly Whipple found that stimulating
different parts of the genitals (clitoris, labia, vaginal walls, etc.)
corresponded to activation in different parts of the female brain associated with different brain functions, and that women self-report different emotions based on different areas touched.
James Pfaus' landmark study of female rats
at Concordia University has established that these lower mammals
remember negative (pleasureless) sexual experiences and make decisions
for the future (decisions involving the prefrontal cortext) to avoid
potential mates associated with bad sex. He also found that the dopamine
system means that female sexual pleasure is self-reinforcing:
rewarding sex leads to more active search for rewarding sex, and
disappointing sex leads, after only a few negative experiences, among
female lower mammals, to withdrawal.
Women respond differently
than men do to something as fundamental as being stroked. A final
relatively new finding is that women are extremely variable and
individual to the level of the neural wiring in their pelvises, meaning
that every woman must be "learned" anew.
If we put these new
findings into practice, we can see that our culture's "sexual script"
may well change, to make female arousal patterns and the female
mind-body connection more central.
Other findings should make us take rape and sexual abuse far more seriously: A now vast body of data, such as a study
by Cindy Meston and Alessandra Rellini, shows that the after effects of
rape or sexual abuse stay in the female brain and body years after a
"non-violent" attack, changing physical functions as basic as the body's
response to exercise and to erotic videos. This data should lay to rest
that there is any such thing as a "non-violent" rape, and it opens new
vistas for more effective support for victims of rape and sex crime.
These
new data are often eye-opening, and some of them might make us grapple
with our conventional wisdom. But should we be alarmed by them? I think
not. There is nothing unfeminist about finding out more about female
anatomy and sexual response. Indeed, it is a fundamentally empowering
project. And there is nothing trivial about female pleasure and women's
wish for more of it.
Given that women throughout the world are
targeted for their sexuality -- from female genital mutilation, to child
marriage, to the use of rape as a weapon of war, to some countries in
which simple gestures of female desire such as kissing or texting a
potential partner are sometimes punished with stoning or burning -- the
more we insist on understanding and respecting female sexual well-being,
the safer and healthier all of us can be.
I believe that engaging
with these remarkable new findings is part of feminism's long and
laudable tradition of seeing empowerment in supporting women's sexual
self-knowledge and autonomy. It is odd to me that one would have to make
a case for that -- in 2012 -- but as we should see by now, the next
sexual revolution is long overdue.Naomi Wolf is the author of the new book Vagina: A New Biography.In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, inc